* 11/20/25 - City That Works (substack newsletter) Lessons from New York’s recent housing wins............................
Buzz Sawyer
...............................................................
Lessons from New York’s recent housing winsA path to better housing policy in one of our most expensive cities
Election results for ballot referendum 5, the least controversial of the ballot referenda results. Green represents yes votes, and red represents no votes. Source: Yes On Affordable Housing post-election analysis. As you may have heard, New York City just elected a new mayor. What you may have missed is what happened on the back of the ballot: New Yorkers approved a series of referenda to the city charter governing land use. These changes have the potential to make an enormous difference in the city’s struggle to build new housing for all income levels. The changes were also pretty contentious. While the final bills ended up cruising to victory with 57-58% of the vote, they faced fierce opposition from large portions of the City Council which spent taxpayer dollars as part of a campaign to defeat them.¹ So I figured it was worth digging in to understand what housing advocates in New York have accomplished, and what lessons Chicago and other cities might take from the process. Housing advocates are stacking wins Last year, the City Council passed a landmark set of reforms, collectively termed the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, which triggered major reforms to the city’s zoning code. Through a combination of upzoning, reduced parking mandates, and relaxed rules on accessory dwelling units, the reforms are projected to increase the zoned capacity of the city (i.e. the total number of units that could legally be built) by more than 80,000 homes. But even with those changes, New York still faces an acute housing shortage. More zoning changes will still be required – especially if the city is to add necessary density around transit stations, or meet Mayor-elect Mamdani’s ambitious goals to build additional public housing units. New York’s zoning process is notoriously slow moving, and just like other cities with single-member districts, the practice of member deference (or aldermanic prerogative) creates powerful political incentives for localized NIMBY opposition to overwhelm citywide housing needs. The new ballot referenda built on the City of Yes wins by making it easier to accelerate, or even short-circuit, the traditional zoning process and build more housing. In particular:
A final measure to shift the city’s elections to align with national elections narrowly failed to pass. That one’s a real pity for some reasons we’ll discuss below. Notably, that wasn’t directly backed by the full set of housing advocates. Election years aside, this is a huge win for housing in New York. Collectively, the measures limit the power of individual City Council members to delay approvals of new housing. That should increase the speed of approvals and the number of projects that get approved in the first place. So how’d they pass? The wave was building The simplest answer is that New York’s housing crisis has hit a breaking point. That, coupled with record-setting turnout thanks to a high-profile Mayoral election, helped power a surge of voters to the polls who were happy to embrace ballot questions that were clearly targeted at addressing the city’s housing crisis. In the process, the huge turnout helped dilute the power of specific interest groups who might be able to wield power in a low-turnout primary but were swamped by normie voters in a high-turnout general election. And at a citywide level, normie voters are pretty pro-housing. “NIMBY really means something specific – not in *my* backyard,” observed Alex Armlovich, a Senior Housing Policy Analyst at the Niskanen Center. “Housing at the citywide level is really popular, but it’s usually a challenge to translate that into civic action.” The broader housing and abundance discourse may really be starting to break through. In contrast, the City Council’s opposition had to rely on a series of procedural bank shots, to try to convince voters that making it easier to build housing was a bad idea, because the council needed to wring more concessions out of development projects across the city. Sam Deutsch, who writes about transit over at Better Cities, told me that the combination of high turnout and clear ballot wording made a huge difference. The amendment texts talk clearly about creating opportunities to build more affordable housing. “The average voter doesn’t differentiate between types of zoning. It’s the outcome (more affordable housing) that they want.” Advocates built a broad coalition Housing advocates also built a particularly wide coalition, covering the full scope of the Democratic Party, including Governor Kathy Hochul and both Andrew Cuomo and Zohran Manmdani. Mamdani’s formal endorsement came at the last minute (in part due to coalition management with organized labor), but his campaign rhetoric virtually mirrored the ballot measures. Armlovich noted that “it really was true that Zohran supported them, and voters were pretty smart about realizing that.” Notably, the referenda won in every assembly district won by Mamdani (as well as six won by Cuomo). The pro-housing campaign also built a strong set of down-ballot validators, including three popular borough presidents, as well as Brad Lander, the outgoing City Comptroller and a staunch progressive with a strong record on affordable housing. “Certainly in progressive circles, he is incredibly well-known and beloved,” noted Amit Bhagga, the campaign manager for the Yes on Affordable Housing PAC. “That gave us a really big opportunity to educate folks.” That advocacy, coupled with a deep bench of local democratic clubs and reform organizations helped organizers lock down their left flank. Bhagga pointed out that one of the key reasons the non-profit affordable housing community came out in such strong support was that they had seen their own 100% affordable projects stall for years as part of the City’s lengthy land use process. Progressive support also made it easier to push back against some opposition from organized labor. Most unions didn’t take a position on the measures, but 32BJ, an SEIU union representing property and building service workers, did come out in opposition. Their logic was that the current process allowed Councilmembers to maximize the concessions that they extracted on projects – including pro-labor commitments. Advocates were uniform in their belief that the changes were likely beneficial for organized labor, because projects built with city funds already come with labor commitments, and more construction should translate into more construction and building maintenance jobs). But in the short term, the combination of high turnout, strong progressive relationships, and close ties to the Mamdani campaign all helped prevent that opposition from derailing the ballot initiatives. The pro-housing camp also benefited from the odd composition of their opponents. To beat back the effort, the City Council had to build a coalition of Republicans, establishment/machine Democrats and left-NIMBYs. By highlighting the opposition from Republicans in Staten Island and Queens, housing advocates made it harder for centrist or left-leaning opponents of the referendums to make a credible case.
Vickie Paladino, Ballot referenda opponent and Republican City Council Member from Northern Queens. Targeted messages across a diverse city Housing advocates also pursued a targeted strategy to push different messages that would resonate in diverse neighborhoods across the city. Bhagga noted that in many of the city’s lower density neighborhoods, a large share of homeowners are non-white. In many cases, African-Americans, Latinos, and a wide range of other immigrant communities see the outer boroughs as offering a better shot to pursue homeownership than nearby suburbs with far higher property taxes. A lot of the coalition’s messaging was straightforward, and didn’t shy away from talking about supply shortages or explaining that low vacancy rates were driving rents up. But they also used tailored messaging to key swing coalitions. For outer borough homeowners of color, the coalition highlighted the City’s shortage of senior housing (no options to downsize) and lack of housing for new families (no way for kids to find a place in the neighborhood). Among renters of color, the coalition leaned hard into the displacement crisis and the impact that that’s having on the actual character of neighborhoods. Organizers also stressed messaging about housing quality in addition to price – an issue that can be just as painful for renters as price. The coalition aimed a very different set of messages at left-leaning Gen Zers in New York’s ‘commie corridor,’ stretching from North Brooklyn to Western Queens. “Let’s call a spade a spade. A lot of these folks are transplants,” Bhagga noted. “These are people who’ve experienced New York City’s housing crisis really acutely… We want people’s drive and energy. And we have a problem if we can’t afford to keep them here.” For this segment, organic social media stressed how exciting the city can be – and made an explicit pitch to new arrivals to help maintain the city as a center of creativity and opportunity. Notably, the ballot referenda won decisively in all of these areas. The highest margins of victory were in the Bronx. The City that Works could learn something from The City of Yes The battles in New York will continue – the City Council is grumbling about the ballot wording and already trying to subvert some of the changes. But housing advocates in New York will enter the next round of battles with a stronger political position, and confidence that they have the voters behind them. More broadly, housing advocates across the country should be encouraged by New York’s success. Not all the tools will be the same (Chicago doesn’t have a City Charter, so some of these reforms may require action from Springfield). But the tide is clearly turning. Advocates shouldn’t be scared to talk about supply shortfalls or vacancy rates. And in situations where we can pair high-turnout elections with broad political coalitions, YIMBYs should be able to put a lot more wins on the board. Thanks for reading A City That Works! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work. 1 This was almost certainly illegal A City That Works is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell A City That Works that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won't be charged unless they enable payments.
© 2025 A City That Works
|
